


Unconditionally

by limeblood



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Asexual Character, Asexual Crowley (Good Omens), Asexual Relationship, Asexuality, Crowley is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, It ends happy I promise, M/M, Mentions of sex work, References to Oscar Wilde, Sex Repulsed Asexual Character, they don't end up having sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 18:04:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20313748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/limeblood/pseuds/limeblood
Summary: “You know,” Aziraphale breathed against his skin. “If we were humans, this is the part where we would have sex. Do you want to?”Crowley froze. A prickle of frost crept down his neck, and then melted to shiver down his spine and into his lungs.  He… honestly hadn’t considered that.  And wasn’t that the understatement of the century, he hadn’t even known that was an option!  Would it even work with a demon and an angel? He supposed they’d had no problem with the kissing up until now, so it was probably fine, but he wished he’d thought of it sooner.  He wished he’d had time to prepare, to do a bit of research, maybe, to brace himself.“Crowley, dear?”





	Unconditionally

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Human Way](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20241868) by [battle_cat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/battle_cat/pseuds/battle_cat). 

> Based on [a very fluffy thread](https://fuckyeahisawthat.tumblr.com/post/186598501830/jackironsides-cactusspatz) and one line from [a very fluffy fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20241868#main) by [@fuckywahisawthat](https://fuckyeahisawthat.tumblr.com/)/[battle_cat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/battle_cat/pseuds/battle_cat) that I managed to turn into 4k of angst
> 
> Please note that this fic contains references to what is basically 6000 years of coerced sex work. There's no graphic detail, and it's all in the past, but tread carefully. More detail can be found in the end notes if you'd like to check it out.

Aziraphale was just as soft as he’d expected, maybe even more so. Kissing him (gently at first, and then more deeply) was like sinking into bed at the end of a long, _long_ day. Was like sitting on a rock in the sun. Was almost like Grace, except without all that pesky guilt. 

Six thousand years, and they could finally do this. Six thousand years of watching him from across the garden, the desert, a city square, a table at the Ritz. Six thousand years of looking over his shoulder, of fluffing up reports, of carrying out a job to the letter so that Hell didn’t have any reason to check up on him. Six thousand years and an almost-apocalypse and he could finally kiss his angel.

He brought his hands to Aziraphale’s hips and nudged him backwards towards the loveseat he kept in the living space above the shop. A _loveseat,_ wasn’t that perfect? It had been the object of much frustration over the years, having to watch Aziraphale sit there and read with _just barely not enough space_ for him to share without touching. _Well_ he thought _now’s our chance, isn’t it?_

So he walked Aziraphale back until his knees hit the loveseat and he had to sit down, breaking the kiss with a breathless, surprised noise. 

“Change of scenery, dear?”

“Figured it might make things easier, y’know. Won’t have to worry about falling over.”

“Excellent idea, my boy. Now get down here, or I’ll get lonely.”

“Can’t have that,” Crowley murmured against his lips as he crawled into Aziraphale’s lap. 

Crowley was no stranger to kissing. He was no stranger to the bits that came after, either, but this was different than any temptation of a king or deflowering of an important virgin. This was Aziraphale. These were Aziraphale’s hands on his waist, on his neck, in his hair. Aziraphale’s lips on his, more precious that he could ever have imagined. This felt right and _warm_ in a way no temptation ever could, and he marveled at what he had missed. It was no wonder humans spent so much time kissing, he was quickly finding that it was one of the best sensations on earth, so long as you actually liked the person you were doing it with. 

His thoughts were getting away from him a bit. Aziraphale’s kisses were deeper now, harder, and so was the grip on his waist. Crowley groaned quietly at the rush of sensation (of love too, though he didn’t dare say it yet). Aziraphale broke the kiss with a grin and met his eyes, bare for once, before diving back in and working kisses across Crowley’s jaw, behind his ear, down his neck, dipping into his collarbone. He was having quite the difficult time not blaspheming, because the sensations never stopped, they honestly just kept getting better. Amazing what kissing could feel like when it wasn’t part of a job. 

Crowley wrapped his arms around the angel’s neck and settled more deeply in his lap, pressing their chests firmly together. His angel was warm, and lovely, and when he wrapped his arms around Crowley tighter still, it made something bright bubble up in his chest. It made his heart skip and his eyes get hot, and so he sat there reveling in it. Thank anybody that he could simply miracle away the ache in his knees from bending them like this, because he wouldn’t move from this spot, from Aziraphale’s arms, for anything short of another apocalypse. 

“You know,” Aziraphale breathed against his skin. “If we were humans, this is the part where we would have sex. Do you want to?”

Crowley froze. A prickle of frost crept down his neck, and then melted to shiver down his spine and into his lungs. He… honestly hadn’t considered that. And wasn’t that the understatement of the century, he hadn’t even known that was an option! Would it even work with a demon and an angel? He supposed they’d had no problem with the kissing up until now, so it was probably fine, but he wished he’d thought of it sooner. He wished he’d had time to prepare, to do a bit of research, maybe, to brace himself. 

“Crowley, dear?”

And that was worry in Aziraphale’s voice, wasn’t it? He’d been quiet too long. 

“Yeah,” he managed, voice rough. “Yeah, ‘course”

He caught a small smile flash across Aziraphale’s face and relaxed slightly. He was ok then, hadn’t messed it up yet. With humans it was as easy as dipping your feet into a pond to see their minds, their desires. Tempting was easier when you could make yourself the perfect temptation, after all. But angels were different, and Crowley had had to rely on body language, tone, and blessed _verbal communication_ to get this far, and it felt like he was stumbling around in the dark. 

“Beautiful,” Aziraphale whispered into his collarbones as he undid the top button of his vest. “You really are beautiful, my dear boy.”

Crowley huffed out a breath at that, distracting Aziraphale with a kiss deep enough that he seemed to forget Crowley’s buttons entirely. He skated his hands down Crowley’s sides slowly, and goodness that did feel nice. _This is what it’s come to_ he thought to himself _he’s reduced me to words like “goodness”_. 

But the cold, wet feeling in his chest was still there, and it seemed to have doused that bright, bubbly thing from before. Why was that? He had no reason to be nervous. In fact, he had every reason to be confidant, to take the lead and show his angel the time of his life. He didn’t know if Aziraphale had ever made the effort before, but he doubted Heaven would have approved. Crowley on the other hand, had thousands of years and hundreds of temptations worth of experience to draw from. He could give his angel everything, and he couldn’t possibly fail. He just had to listen, to read it right, find the small grin or raised eyebrow that meant that he was on the right track, and he would be fine. He could do this. 

Aziraphale’s hands wandered back down to his hips and traced the waistband of his skin-tight jeans, fluttered over his belt, dipped under the fabric to caress the skin of his hips. Those beautiful hands dipped lower, below the waistband of his underwear. They may have bent reality a bit to allow those hands to take gentle handfuls of Crowley’s ass and pull his hips closer still. 

Crowley gasped raggedly, breaking the kiss as Aziraphale pulled him close and he could feel it now. Regardless of any effort made in the past, his angel was making an effort now and that was. Perfect. That was perfect, that was exactly what was supposed to happen. Crowley didn’t know why he hadn’t made the effort himself yet, Aziraphale was bound to notice soon. 

Ducking his head into the safety of his angel’s warm shoulder, he set his mind to it, called a cock into existence with all of his considerable will and imagination. It didn’t come. It had always come before. Instead of a cock there came the pinpricks in his fingers and toes, crawling up his arms and legs. Those were normal by now, but usually he at least had a cock to go with them. 

He felt Aziraphale latch onto his neck again, the other side this time, but it felt far away. His heart started tripping again like it always did before sex, less like skipping though a meadow and more like stumbling down a steep rocky hill. It went quiet for long moments at a time, trying to find the safest path before jerking to a start and sliding a few feet on loose dirt. The cold wet thing in his chest was spreading, dripping down to his stomach. It slipped down his arms in goosebumps that turned them to lead around Aziraphale’s neck. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to find the gentle warmth from before. With a cold start he realized that with his eyes buried like this, he couldn’t actually tell Aziraphale apart from any of his jobs. He should have been able to. Aziraphale felt nothing like James I, or Alexander the Great, or Elizabeth I, or Nzinga, or Julie d’Aubigny, or, or, or.

He was starting to tremble. He could feel it, barely, just like he could feel Aziraphale move away from his neck and nudge him backwards gently.

“What do you want, my dear boy?”

Crowley pulled his brain back into his head and met Aziraphale’s eyes. They were dark with arousal, and so deeply adoring that it nearly took his breath away.

“I… what?”

A wry grin crept onto Aziraphale’s face. “What would you like to do, Crowley? Don’t get me wrong, kissing you is a dream, but if we’re going to do things the human way, there’s a lot more to it than kissing.”

Crowley managed a chuckle at that. He was overreacting, clearly. Aziraphale was here, and he was himself. Crowley could feel the warmth slowly seeping back into his legs from where he sat on the angel’s lap. 

“Have a lot of experience doing things the human way, do you?” he asked, throwing a grin back.

“Well,” Aziraphale finally seemed a bit flustered at that. “You know how much I enjoy the comforts of earth. I figured, if I’m going to be living here, I’ll need to be familiar with the experience. That was the excuse I prepared for Head Office anyway. After a while, it was just because I enjoyed it.”

“Angel!” Crowley laughed in mock astonishment. “An angel of the lord inciting lust amongst men! The scandal of it all!” This was good. Crowley could do banter, and his heart had stopped slipping down hills

“I don’t know how much ‘inciting’ I was doing, they seemed to have it all worked out on their own.”

A wide grin stretched Crowley’s face as something occurred to him. “So you did fuck Wilde then!”

“I…” “Well Crowley I never…” “A gentleman does not kiss and tell!” was what Aziraphale finally settled on.

“I always thought it was odd that you had three signed copies of _The Importance of Being Earnest_. You were the Jack to his Algernon, only you actually got to fuck.”

“Crowley really,” he said, but he was grinning. “This is hardly the time to talk about what Oscar and I may or may not have been up to. I was asking about you!”

Aziraphale’s perfect fingers began tracing the crease in Crowley’s jeans where his thigh met his hips. Right next to where his cock would be, if he had managed to make the effort. His heart stumbled another few feet, and had trouble finding solid ground again. 

“What about me, angel?” he asked with a teasing grin. He was sure he could manage it if he just had a moment, just another moment. 

“What do you like, dear? What would you like to do?” Aziraphale’s voice was lower and a bit rumbly, and any other moment Crowley would be thrilled. “Or what would you like me to do to you?” 

His fingers were creeping closer to Crowley’s zipper, nails dragging against the weave to send tiny vibrations through the denim. He was going to feel it, the _lack of it,_ any moment now, and Crowley will have really fucked things up.

“I… I don’t,”

“Crowley, my dear?” And there it was, because Aziraphale’s voice was back to normal, maybe even a bit higher, and his eyebrows were drawn together. “Is everything alright, dear boy?”

The pet name nearly broke him. He felt his eyes grow hot and his lip tremble and honestly considered praying for deliverance.

“Oh my sweet boy, what’s wrong?” Aziraphale was pulling away now, putting space between them, and Crowley should have seen this coming but it still hurt to have lost him.

“Crowley my dear, please talk to me. You know I can’t read your mind.”

And wasn’t Crowley grateful for that, it was a mess in there at the moment. 

“I don’t think…,” he managed eventually. “Would you believe me if I told you this was a bit fast for me?”

“Oh my dear, of course I’d believe you!” Aziraphale face seemed to break open, partly from relief at getting a full sentence out of Crowley, and partly in dread. _Would he believe…?_

Crowley drew back further, as much as he didn’t want to, and Aziraphale set to making him a comfortable spot next to him on the loveseat. He settled there gratefully, pulling his feet up and resting his chin on his knees. He nearly reached for his glasses, but Aziraphale had miracled them away earlier, and he didn’t know where they’d gone. 

“My boy,” Aziraphale said eventually, turning to face Crowley on the couch. “You’ve been patient for however many centuries, I can be patient too. We can do this at whatever pace you’d like.” He reached out and gently stroked Crowley’s hand where it rested on his ankle. “I can wait as long as you’d like.”

Crowley should have been relieved, he wanted to be relieved, but the courage that he’d mustered up shriveled in his chest. Aziraphale seemed to notice, because his eyebrows pinched again, and he leaned forward. 

“My dear, will you tell me what’s the matter?”

Crowley couldn’t meet his eyes. Aziraphale’s gaze nearly burned on him, but he didn’t seem angry, so maybe he could salvage this.

He moved to rest his head on Aziraphale’s shoulder instead, and felt the angel wrap a warm arm around his body, felt the other come to rest on his knee. “You ever get tired of blessing priests, or whatever it is that Heaven sends you to do?”

Aziraphale took a moment before he spoke. For all his faith was sometimes naïve, he really was quite clever. “I suppose they got a bit tedious at times, but I don’t think I ever got tired of the blessings themselves,” he said quietly, carefully. “Especially the ones that I got to choose. The seventeenth order to bless this or that bishop or monastery definitely got repetitive, but once I got there, got to know people, it was always rewarding. And then I could usually afford to bless a few people on the street, because Upstairs was already expecting to process a few miracles.”

“And now, after everything, do you still…?”

“I still bless the occasional stranger,” he said gently. “Even more now that Heaven won’t come chasing me down.”

“Oh.”

Crowley could feel Aziraphale watching him out the corner of his eye, but his angel didn’t ask. Just sat there and held him. He waited. That more than anything is what prompted Crowley to talk.

“For us,” he started, a bit roughly. “For demons, you know, a lot of the jobs are Deadly Sins. Most sins you can trace back to a Deadly Sin if you’re generous. Corruption is really just Sloth. Bribes are really just Greed. Even the M25, I called that Wrath on the report.”

He felt Aziraphale smile and press a kiss to his hair. He pushed on. 

“’Course, some of them are more specific. ‘Convince this person to kill this person at this place and time’, ‘Attend this party and cozy up to this or that noble’, ‘Join this queen’s harem and whisper these ideas in her ear’.”

Aziraphale’s hand (the one not resting gently on Crowley’s arm) was picking at the fabric of his trousers, deep in thought. Crowley carefully moved his own hand so that it just brushed Aziraphale’s leg. 

“And, you know, ‘sex sells’. I’m pretty sure that was one of ours, that whole strategy, but it was hell’s policy long before it hit advertising. Lust’s the quickest, easiest way to cause trouble, usually, and it comes wrapped up with Greed, Envy, Wrath, and Sloth too. Somebody’s husband gets angry, somebody else wants to be fucking whoever you’re fucking, somebody abandons their duties in favor of ravishing the new toy. Nobody’s going to trust some weird new guy in the odd glasses with government secrets. But get the weird guy in your bed, wait to see if he kills you, after that you can probably trust him. And even if you can’t you at least want to keep him around.”

With the utmost care, Aziraphale brushed his free hand over Crowley’s, and when he didn’t pull away, held it gently but firmly. 

“Y’know, for a long time, I didn’t know it was called ‘love making’. I thought people were talking about something else, I dunno. It was a tool for me, I figured it was a tool for everybody else.”

Aziraphale hummed quietly. Crowley gripped his hand a little tighter.

“Did you enjoy it?” he asked. “With Oscar, or whoever?”

“I did,” Aziraphale said quietly after a moment. 

“Huh.”

They were both quiet for a long time before the angel spoke.

“Did you not? Enjoy it, I mean.”

“I dunno.” Crowley thought for a long moment before he managed to put it into words. “It was never for me to enjoy, y’know? It wasn’t about me, it was about the temptation. And you know humans, they’re so transparent. Five minutes and I knew everything they had ever wanted, every fantasy they had ever had. It was easy to just do that and not think about it. It got the job done. And at least when I got to be somebody else for a bit, it was less… I dunno. ‘Scary’ makes me sound like a toddler. ‘Painful’, maybe.” He was quiet again, but this time the hand not in Aziraphale’s started picking at the couch. 

“I kind of figured that angels and demons weren’t like that,” he said at last. “We haven’t even got the bits unless we make them, I figured nobody really wanted it, and everybody else was just better at sucking it up and doing the job, y’know?”

Aziraphale sucked in a deep breath. It only shook a little. 

“I didn’t know,” he said after a moment. 

“I mean, neither did I, I can’t blame you for that.”

Aziraphale finally turned to look him in the eyes. His angel looked heartbroken, and oh, he did that. 

“Oh no,” he said, pulling him into a hug. “No it’s fine, angel it’s fine, it’s nothing. What’s that face for, get rid of that face. I’m sorry, love, I didn’t mean to upset you, I’m sorry. I can fix it, I promise.”

Aziraphale started at that, and pulled away, though not far enough to let go of Crowley.

“My dear, sweet boy, you will do no such thing,” he said with the most force he had used all night. “There’s absolutely nothing to fix. Except perhaps having a stern word with your superiors. My boy, I never would have asked if I’d known.”

“Oh G-S-whatever, angel, believe me, a stern word won’t do much down there. And it’s fine, I’ll get over it. I just need a bit of time and it’ll be fine. Humans do it constantly, I’ll figure it out.”

Aziraphale had that look again, and Crowley scrambled for something else to say before he cut him off.

“Crowley, that night, after the trials, you said that you’d wanted to kiss me for thousands of years, do you remember that?”

Crowley was blushing furiously, but he managed to nod. 

“In all that time, have you ever imagined having sex with me?”

Crowley’s stomach dropped, and he went cold all over. He refused to meet Aziraphale’s eyes. 

“My dear, I don’t mean to upset you. It’s not a trick, I just want to know.”

“Once,” he whispered.

“Once?”

“Yeah.”

“And what was that like?”

Crowley’s brain ground to a halt. What had it been like? It hadn’t been like much of anything because he couldn’t get his brain to go past taking off his angel’s waistcoat. It all just stopped. 

“’t was after I woke up. When I figured out you and Wilde had been a thing,” he said after a while, still not making eye contact. 

“You really are hung up on Oscar, aren’t you?” Aziraphale chuckled. 

“Yeah, I was.” That was angrier than he had meant it to be but, well.…

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Whatever for?” Aziraphale asked eventually. 

“Well you never shut up about him. Kept talking about his bloody plays, and his book, and that damn cigar lounge. And he’d had quite a reputation.”

“I know gossip is a sin, but I thought you were better than to go around judging people-”

“Not like that, angel, just…. I think that was the first time I wondered if I was meant to enjoy it. You seemed to have liked him so much, and he had that reputation so it wasn’t unreasonable to assume that you and he might have…. And it couldn’t have been a job for you, so you must have enjoyed it. And anyway, I thought, well, maybe I could enjoy it. If I tried. So I tried. And I couldn’t. It wouldn’t work.”

“What wouldn’t work, my dear?”

“My blessed brain couldn’t even imagine it properly! Completely bloody imaginary and I still can’t get it right.” Crowley was tense all over, nearly shaking from anger, or frustration, or whoever knew what. 

“Dear boy,” Aziraphale said, gently pulling Crowley back to rest on his shoulder. “I don’t think it’s something that you get ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. I think it just is. If thinking about it upsets you, then it’s not right for you to think about it. It’s meant to be a thing of love, it’s not supposed to upset you.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m figuring out,” he mumbled into Aziraphale’s neck. He was still strung tight, but the atom bomb in his chest felt a little less like it was going to explode when he was being held like that. “If that’s it though, then it’s just me, right? Like, you enjoy it, which means that other angels and demons probably like it, which means it’s just me.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s just you, my love.” The pet name made him go warm, but he didn’t dare interrupt. “And even if it was, it would hardly matter. There is nothing on this earth nor beyond it that could make me willingly upset you. It doesn’t matter how much I might enjoy it, it’s nothing if you’re not enjoying it too.”

“I can figure it out,” Crowley mumbled, but he was losing steam. He didn’t know how a punch to the gut like Aziraphale’s could feel so good, but it did, and he wasn’t about to argue. 

“That’s just it though, there isn’t anything to figure out, is there?” Aziraphale nudged Crowley enough to meet his eyes. “This isn’t something that you should have to ‘figure out’. I’ve enjoyed sex in the past, but it’s certainly not a requirement. I also enjoy sushi, and I collect misprinted bibles. But I don’t expect you to eat things you don’t like, and I certainly don’t expect you to help me repair books that will hurt you.”

“You don’t need a partner to eat sushi.”

“No, but it’s nice. And to be honest, you don’t really need a partner to get off either, do you?”

“Angel!” he chuckled quietly. “Surely you’re not advocating for the deadly sin of lust!”

“Hush, you.” Aziraphale pulled at one of Crowley’s hands and laced their fingers together. “I have loved you for centuries. I have wanted to kiss you for decades at least. I may have been a bit slow on the uptake, but I know that for sure. There are thousands of things I want to do with you that don’t involve sex. There are no conditions on loving you. If all I ever do is kiss you and hold your hand, it will be more than I ever thought I could have, and more than enough to keep me happy.”

Crowley fought back tears that really shouldn’t have been possible with snake eyes, but fuck it. 

“Angel?”

“Yes, my dear?”

Crowley managed a deep breath and a shaky exhale. He just needed one more thing.

“What if I never figure it out?”

“My love, then I will continue to be the happiest I have ever been.”

Crowley lost to the tears then and did his best to press them into Aziraphale’s shirt instead of letting them run down his face. 

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale said softly, pulling him into a tight hug and easing them both down to lay on the loveseat. “There is nothing in Heaven or Hell that could stop me loving you, least of all this. God Herself could come into this shop and tell me to be rid of you, and I would have no problem disposing of Her like I do every other impolite customer. There is nothing wrong with you, and so there is nothing to be ‘figured out’. If you want to try having sex someday, let me know and we can try. But if that day never comes, I won’t be any less for it, and neither will you.”

The bright bubbly feeling was back. The bubbling was slower, and his chest was stuffed up from crying, but warmth radiated from every inch he touched his angel, and he had _this_ figured out, at the very least. 

“I love you, angel.”

“I love you too, my dear, sweet boy. Unconditionally.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not projecting, you're projecting. 
> 
> Quick note, I 100% borrowed the line '“You know,” Aziraphale breathed against his skin. “If we were humans, this is the part where we would have sex. Do you want to?”' from battle_cat because it punched me in the chest when I read it and I couldn't help but make it sad
> 
> RE: coerced sex work  
This fic is based on the idea that much of Crowley's work as a demon pre-apocalypse involved sleeping with people in order to influence history and/or draw them to sin. He is a sex repulsed asexual, but he's not really aware of that fact, so using sex like that was not a great experience for him. When he and Aziraphale attempt to have sex for the first time, he falls back into his work patterns, begins to dissociate a bit, and then panics a little. Aziraphale is very compassionate, supportive, and understanding, but Crowley has it in his head that he's ruining things. It ends with a lot of fluff and affirmation.


End file.
